I thought this was debunked a while ago. I remember reading an article that ran the numbers and found that while on average overweight people live longer then skinny people, once people remove the skinny people who died due to tobacco related deaths, skinny people's average life span increased decades over overweight people.

tjsands1118:I thought this was debunked a while ago. I remember reading an article that ran the numbers and found that while on average overweight people live longer then skinny people, once people remove the skinny people who died due to tobacco related deaths, skinny people's average life span increased decades over overweight people.

dualplains:tjsands1118: I thought this was debunked a while ago. I remember reading an article that ran the numbers and found that while on average overweight people live longer then skinny people, once people remove the skinny people who died due to tobacco related deaths, skinny people's average life span increased decades over overweight people.

Wait, fat people don't smoke?

No no no.. what he is saying is that fat people can smoke without any health consequences. Get is straight!

tjsands1118: I thought this was debunked a while ago. I remember reading an article that ran the numbers and found that while on average overweight people live longer then skinny people, once people remove the skinny people who died due to tobacco related deaths, skinny people's average life span increased decades over overweight people.

Not so much "debunked" as "that's the explanation a lot of people went with, rather than admit that people who weighed a bit more than others were healthier in many respects."

You see, a lot of people have a minor religion that leads them to think skinny is better, even when we know it really isn't.

tjsands1118:I thought this was debunked a while ago. I remember reading an article that ran the numbers and found that while on average overweight people live longer then skinny people, once people remove the skinny people who died due to tobacco related deaths, skinny people's average life span increased decades over overweight people.

Decades of medical research have shown that there is no greater correlation between living beyond your life expectancy and being 5-10% "underweight" for most of your life.

How this shocks some people is beyond me. What will also shock me is the number of people in this thread who vehemently disagree with this statement.

grinding_journalist:Decades of medical research have shown that there is no greater correlation between living beyond your life expectancy and being 5-10% "underweight" for most of your life.

Um... by decades of medical research, you mean:

A couple of studies...... on rodents... that were not reproducible when repeated on primates.

So... no. There is zero evidence that calorie restriction might correlate to increased lifespan in humans. If you want your pet mouse to live longer, though, yeah, feed him 10% less than full portions or so.

//Admittedly I can't really be down on you too much for not knowing this, if I wasn't bored with access to one of the US's bigger scifinder databases I doubt I'd be as familiar with the literature on random subjects.//Science marches on, yo.

Jim_Callahan:grinding_journalist: Decades of medical research have shown that there is no greater correlation between living beyond your life expectancy and being 5-10% "underweight" for most of your life.

Um... by decades of medical research, you mean:

A couple of studies...... on rodents... that were not reproducible when repeated on primates.

So... no. There is zero evidence that calorie restriction might correlate to increased lifespan in humans. If you want your pet mouse to live longer, though, yeah, feed him 10% less than full portions or so.

//Admittedly I can't really be down on you too much for not knowing this, if I wasn't bored with access to one of the US's bigger scifinder databases I doubt I'd be as familiar with the literature on random subjects.//Science marches on, yo.

Jim_Callahan:A couple of studies...... on rodents... that were not reproducible when repeated on primates.

I've seen those studies, and I don't doubt their results. You'll note, however, that I never mentioned caloric restriction. I mentioned being underweight. While many will conflate the two, they are not the same.

As if it weren't apparent, I fall into the category I describe. I don't restrict my intake; I eat as much as I need to to feel satisfied, and not have my sugar drop to levels that make me feel wonky. Since I've become habituated to this, my body doesn't know the difference. If you want to call that "caloric restriction", go ahead, but going on a particular diet and acclimating yourself to it isn't really restriction, as well as working your body to burn off the calories you don't need.

People don't want to admit that skinnier is healthier since the majority of Americans are overweight, and that would imply they're unhealthy and irresponsible, and we can't have THAT.

Remember, if you are/have ______, it's everybody's fault but yours. No exceptions.

dualplains:tjsands1118: I thought this was debunked a while ago. I remember reading an article that ran the numbers and found that while on average overweight people live longer then skinny people, once people remove the skinny people who died due to tobacco related deaths, skinny people's average life span increased decades over overweight people.

Wait, fat people don't smoke?

No, it's just that since cigarettes are like crack smokers don't eat and they end up skinny.

Cymbal:Really getting tired of the media excusing fat farkers. It's not ok. If the entire world consumed food at the rate of Americans we'd need five earths to support the food supply.

It's ok. It'll go the way of the French Revolution: being obese will be considered a sign of excess wealth, as food prices will go up so sharply due to demand that only the truly wealthy will be able to afford being fat, along with all of the myriad health problems that go with it.

Then, the rage of the underclasses will be directed at the fat, not sympathetic towards them.

You have it the other way around. Heavy smokers aren't (as) likely to be obese because nicotine is a stimulant and can suppress appetite. Weight gain is a known side effect of quitting smoking. Heavy smokers are often thin. . . they don't live any longer than obese people though.

The story went quite a ways in clarifying that being overweight was NOT "healthier",It said that "carrying a few extra pounds may actually reduce the risk of premature death"also..."There were warnings last night that the research should not be taken to mean that there were no negative health implications associated with being overweight or obese."

grinding_journalist:Cymbal: Really getting tired of the media excusing fat farkers. It's not ok. If the entire world consumed food at the rate of Americans we'd need five earths to support the food supply.

It's ok. It'll go the way of the French Revolution: being obese will be considered a sign of excess wealth, as food prices will go up so sharply due to demand that only the truly wealthy will be able to afford being fat, along with all of the myriad health problems that go with it.

Then, the rage of the underclasses will be directed at the fat, not sympathetic towards them.

You have it the other way around. Heavy smokers aren't (as) likely to be obese because nicotine is a stimulant and can suppress appetite. Weight gain is a known side effect of quitting smoking. Heavy smokers are often thin. . . they don't live any longer than obese people though.

As an ex-smoker who lost weight while quitting (i had to give up alcohol for a while because the two are so strongly tied in my brain at this point) I can say I never found much of an appetite suppression from cigs. I mean, if I wanted to use them to replace a snack on a diet they certainly served that role. I can also see how people quitting would jump to another form of oral stimulation. It dulls your senses of taste and smell as well, though I'm not sure if that really counts as an appetite suppressant in terms of an actual drug effect. I guess at the end of the day it doesn't make much difference whether it is the nicotine actually suppressing appetite or the combination of oral stimulation, sensory reduction, and ability to replace the pleasure of a snack with another form of pleasure (oral stimulation followed by a dopamine spike)

wygit:The story went quite a ways in clarifying that being overweight was NOT "healthier",It said that "carrying a few extra pounds may actually reduce the risk of premature death"also..."There were warnings last night that the research should not be taken to mean that there were no negative health implications associated with being overweight or obese."

I think you are grossly overestimating the vision of these fat farkers. They have so much fat in their faces they can barely see. They get the general blurred look of something and then they are off to their next slop trough. All they'll see is the headline justifying their grotesque consumption of tons and tons of shiatty food. Hell, some of them are so fat they have a massively enhanced sense of smell which they rely much more on than sight to track down their next feedbag.

Aelat:The study didn't say people were healthier - it said they lived longer.

...and the sort of dietary restriction that "causes" longer life (a couple of years, typically - nothing huge) leads to other issues. The vegetarian, restricted-calorie diets can trigger some arthritis issues, for example.

Slimmer is also only a survival plus when times are really good. When things go to hell, the slender ones just don't last as long.

machoprogrammer:You look gross and are unhealthier, no matter how you spin it.

...according to the social trends of the last half-century or so, anyway. Historically, skinny and suntanned meant "poor and underfed and unhealthy." It takes a modern, high-tech, medically-sophisticated society to keep large numbers of skinny people alive for more than 40 years.

cirby : Excuse me, are you claiming that we live longer thanks to technology? This goes against established Fark science, please report to the closest Space Nutter indoctrination facility for reprogramming.

Arthen:All I see is wishful speculation that tries to explain away a statistically significant fact. Your disdain for fat is showing.

Here's a thought: I don't care if it shows. We should all have disdain for fat. Fat is disgusting to look at, unhealthy, and in the grand scheme of things is not sustainable given that we won't find four other earth-like planets to harvest like locusts so we an maintain our current obesity rate.

Quantum Apostrophe:cirby : Excuse me, are you claiming that we live longer thanks to technology? This goes against established Fark science, please report to the closest Space Nutter indoctrination facility for reprogramming.

We live longer thanks to technological spinoffs from space exploration and 3D-printer development.

Anything that only uses BMI is junk science. A person who works out regularly will have a higher BMI than if they didn't. Thus looking only at BMI groups the fit with the fat and compares them to the inactive and skinny. They need to use something like % body fat, but that is harder to get than just weight and height.

At my lightest my BMI was screwed. The doctor I was seeing at the time was still 'concerned' I was still obese (as per BMI guidelines), and that I needed to start losing a decent amount of muscle mass to fit in to the BMI range for 'average'.

Which was around the time I told him to go fark himself with a steel pole.

/I didn't use those words//Am now a bit of a fat fat fatty (with a decent amount of muscle) thanks to meds///And alcohol.